Be In The Know Blog

Google recently released a new update to their search engine called the March 2019 Core Update. Google makes hundreds of small changes to their algorithm every year, but most of them go unannounced. Core updates refine Google’s algorithms to make search results better.

Google did not officially announce the update or make a public statement until industry professionals started to notice some changes and approached the company for clarification. This type of privacy is common forGoogle, especially since the guidelines surrounding how it ranks websites are complex. Industry professionals arestill waiting to see how the changes associated with the March 2019 Core Update, which was rolled out on March 12th, may impact websites' overall rankingsand traffic.

If you aren't using Google Analytics to inform your online marketing strategy, it's time to start. This foundational tool is free, easily accessible and loaded with valuable data. Even if you're utilizing other Web analytics tools, Google's offerings are too useful to ignore. But be careful to not overlook reporting from other media platforms like Facebook. Not all platforms measure performance in the same way, but here’s a quick guide for Facebook vs. Google Analytics. The data interpreted through Google Analytics exists in layers, similar to bedrock accumulating on top of itself. Although the surface has plenty of insights, drilling deeper into the data can prove more revealing and provide smarter guidance for your digital strategy.

In most cases, you'll want to use a two-pronged approach. To some degree, the top-level insights brought by basic site performance metrics are illuminating enough to improve campaigns on short notice, but to uncover deeper, more complex and meaningful insights hidden in the data, you need to dig a little deeper.

When it comes to data-driven marketing, it's not enough to measure your performance — you also need to know how to translate your findings into action.

In the first part of this series, we shared why measuring marketing performance is critical to your business success. Then, in part two, we defined key metrics and explained why they're important. Today, we're taking a look at three common issues you may discover when analyzing your website performance metrics, and what you can do to improve in these areas.

Whether you're delving into the world of marketing metrics for the first time, or you're hoping to improve your current performance monitoring strategy, understanding marketing analytics jargon is crucial. After all, how can you effectively analyze your results and translate reports into actionable efforts if you don't understand what you're measuring?

In the first part of this series, we discussed why you should measure marketing analytics. Now, to help you measure the right metrics (and decipher your results), here are the top six campaign performance and website metrics that matter most.

How do you determine whether a business is on track to meet its goals, identify areas of improvement, or measure how well its investments are yielding returns? Small business owners likely rely on a series of business metrics like sales revenue, net profit margin and more. This data gives them visibility into company performance and ensures they're able to consistently drive success.

But what about when it comes to marketing efforts?

If you don't measure marketing performance using the appropriate analytics, you could be losing money and missing critical opportunities. Most marketers who adopt data-driven campaigns enjoy five times the ROI on marketing spend, according to Business2Community.

Here are three reasons you should begin to measure marketing performance, if you're not already:

How do you know which of your marketing efforts led to sales? Marketing attribution is a way to determine the value or ROI of your marketing channels, according to Salesforce. But accurate attribution is difficult: When a customer interacts with email, social media, website content and other channels prior to a conversion, how do you weigh the monetary value of each campaign?

Effective attribution requires analytics and some trial and error on the part of marketers. But businesses are sometimes reluctant to embrace marketing attribution strategies because there's confusion about the best approach. Here are three common myths that might be holding you back from adopting an attribution strategy.

Integrating digital campaigns is key to building a seamless user experience, but marketing across channels can make it difficult to track which campaigns are driving conversions. When you can't pin down performance for separate campaigns, you can't apply optimizations with accuracy and ROI remains a mystery.

This is why cross-channel attribution is so important. Attribution is the process of accurately crediting separate campaigns with the results they drive on an individual basis. This isn't as easy as it seems — if one customer engages with a brand through three separate channels before converting, there's rarely a clear indicator of which channel was most instrumental.

You'd never hire a wedding cake baker without a consultation, right? Sure, they can craft a beautiful cake, but they need specific details to make it personal for you. Your wedding colors, theme, flavor preferences and food allergies must be acknowledged — otherwise your cake won't be unique or appropriate.

The same holds true for business promotions. If you want your marketing partners to create spot-on web campaigns, they need to access your Google Analytics to gather data and thoroughly review it. Think of it as the ingredients necessary for the perfect cake.

Conducting a brand audit is an essential step for all marketers, whether your organization is a burgeoning startup or an established enterprise. Reviewing your online (and offline) performance gives you a bird's-eye view of things that are working well and areas that could use some attention.

Additionally, a review of your brand can help you:

See where you stand competitively

Determine who your customers are

Meet your customers' expectations

Refine your strategy moving forward

Your priorities will dictate your approach to the brand audit. If you're focused on a digital presence, you might want to emphasize analytics; meanwhile, brick-and-mortar operations may stand to gain more from robust customer surveys. Either way, every marketer should attempt to examine the following areas during a brand audit.

If you're investing in digital marketing, small business data analytics should be top of mind as you link efforts like content, social media, ads and email to realize a return on your investment.

According to research from HubSpot, just 61 percent of marketers believe they have an effective strategy, while 24 percent have no idea whether their leads are turning into sales. In addition, 40 percent said proving ROI is a top challenge.

Those stats suggest there's a lot of room for improvement. However, the beauty of digital tech is that it allows for detailed tracking and analysis of everything you do — but only if you're set up correctly and know how to use the tools.